DuPont PAINTS DUCO-DULUX & GOLD PAINT 13/06/97 FC List A recent posting about express car lettering being DULUX gold tweaked my senses about what I consider another piece of 'misinformation' spread by the model RR press, in that they lead one to believe that "DULUX" was inseparable from "gold". A couple ads in the 1946 and 1953 CBC's (ya, I told you I actually read them) from the "Better things for better living....through Chemistry" people at E.I. DuPont de NEMOURS & CO., Inc., tell some of the history of this paint. In brief, here it is: In 1925, the "DUCO" finish was born in a DuPont lab. It was a nitrocellulose pyroxylin lacquer-type material intended for passenger cars and was for spray painting only. They had high and low gloss versions for exterior use, and a matte finish for interior use. Drying time was about 30 minutes. In 1930, the "DULUX" finish was announced. It was an alkyd synthetic resin enamel, which featured "clear topcoats are not necessary". It was intended for use on freight cars as well as passenger and diesels, and could be either sprayed or brushed. "DULUX" was higher gloss than "DUCO" (but not as high as present day epoxies) on exteriors, and there was also a matte finish version of "DULUX" for interiors. Drying time was overnight at room temperature. Both "DUCO" and "DULUX" were available in the 1930's to '50's. (I don't know when they were removed from the market.) So, "DULUX" was most likely used for gold lettering because it could be brushed, and it had a higher gloss. Whether all gold painting was done with DULUX is debatable. However, I'd guess that gold probably came in "DUCO" as well as "DULUX". And certainly "DULUX" gold was not the only "DULUX" color, since it was intended for painting all kinds of cars, and "DULUX" red was specifically promoted for cabooses. Lastly, it is clear that "DULUX" gold could not have been used on anything prior to 1930. That's all for today's lesson, Dick Harley 14/06/97 FC list I'd like to expand on Dick Harley's info on Dulux paint and gold. In railroad usage, "gold" meant gold leaf when applied to a car or locomotive. As early as the late 1870s and early 1880s Baldwin was specifying either "gold" lettering and striping, or "color" lettering and striping. The latter would be paint of a (non-metalic) color as a stand-in for gold leaf. Some railroads even mixed gold and color - with gold on the locomotive and color on the tender (check Carson & Colorado). By the turn of the century aluminum paint and aluminum leaf were in use on some railroads. Baldwin lettered many locomotives in aluminum. At least some railroads (including the Southern Pacific) found that by covering aluminum leaf with an intentionally yellowed varnish, the result looked like gold leaf at a cheaper cost (aluminum providing a neutral metallic base, with the varnish providing the color). Evidence suggests (but has not yet confirmed) that SP referred to this treatment as "aluminum bronze". I found this application on the cab of a Southern Pacific 4-4-0 class E-23 (built by Schenectady in 1900) which later was installed on Virginia & Truckee #27. (It also had a boxcar red roof in SP days.) Information gathered and reformatted by 30 MAR 2020 | NCRails.com In the 1930s many railroads were looking for ways to cut costs. Gold leaf was still commonly used on passenger cars. A (non-metalic) paint color substitute was included in the Dulux line - commonly referred to simply as Dulux (not "Dulux gold"). This paint color would effectively be the successor to the old "color" used by Baldwin years before. In the 1930s and 1940s many railroads switched from gold leaf or from the aluminum treatment to "Dulux" on their passenger equipment. Hope this all helps. #NAME? 16/06/97 Rich Harley's history of Dulux is quite interesting, and I can add some insight into some of the posts that followed. Dulux is a product line, not a color, and DuPont offers "Dulux Gold" in almost all of its lines, including Centari and Imron, etc. Many other companies offer the same color under a variety of names, even sign paint. And I've seen many more specification sheets call the color "imitation gold" than Dulux gold -- the EMD styling sheets I have use the "Duco" name as that's what was in vogue in the 1940s and '50s. DuPont offers two colors that would pass for the gold and, believe it or not, seven distinct shades of Pullman green. The Dulux Gold color, like some postings mentioned, is similar to a buff, almost like a manila folder or envelope. I've been involved in several historic repaints of museum equipment, and found that DuPont pays most attention to its auto paint lines, and ALMOST every railroad color is available in auto paint -- Imron is the most limited in terms of color availability, and spraying it is getting tougher in almost every state because it's so toxic as a liquid and a gas. Cross referencing old paint numbers is still difficult, but a good auto parts store will have a swatch book and cross reference from old numbers from which colors can be matched and purchased in small quantities. And DuPont can cross reference some old part numbers to its auto paint lines. EMD's styling section used just ten or twelve primary colors in its paint schemes, and all production units used these basic Duco colors unless a customer specified a custom color. For example, B&M maroon was the same as Lackawanna maroon, EMD demos and Rock Island units. The imitation golds were likely all the same, unless the customer wanted otherwise. What's interesting is that these primary colors looked different when in different combinations. Some modelers and paint manufacturers have been chasing those colors for years -- in photos, the sun angle and photo angle and atmosphere can shift colors amazingly. Example, a camera looking even slightly uphill will pick up the reflection of the sky; exactly level at a 3/4 subject will pick up color at exactly the same angle behind the subject, and so on. That's why the hardcore portrait artists (aka Roster Shooters) only shoot in the summer at 10:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. with the sun directly at their back with Kodachrome 25 (long renowned as the most neutral and accurate, of any film type, in color rendition). Any earlier or later in the day and the sun picks up the color of the atmosphere, and any higher in the sky, the sun doesn't shed unuff light on the side of the subject to render proper color. About Soo Line maroon: Without comparing numbers on the drawing I won't speculate whether it was the standard maroon (but I'd like to know). But I do know from CPR's own company historian that CPR took it's early maroon diesel color from the Soo Line cab units -- CPR calls that color crimson (sunset or sunrise????) But Penny's Tuscan red and Brunswick green were custom colors. Santa Fe's warbonnet colors are standard, while SP's gray isn't. And I know in the case of the Lackawanna, that diesel maroon found its way onto non-revenue rolling stock repaints of the 1950s, and even on some of the revenue boxcars. Information gathered and reformatted by 30 MAR 2020 | NCRails.com Part of the confusion with EMD colors occurred in 1972 when the paint shop became Imron capable. Since Imron has a completely different make-up from it's predecessors, the color pigments aren't exactly the same. We in the East were perhaps the biggest victims, as Erie-Lackawanna's SD45's, delivered in Imron, showed more of an oxide color than the classic maroon, and the yellow practically glowed in the dark. The EMD color chips from the streamline era were disposed of and are in a private collection, and at least one paint manufacturer has worked with them: AccuPaint. Since my pursuit is the Lackawanna, I know that AP's Engine Maroon matches the EMD chip perfectly, and is therefore good for the B&M, RI, EMD et. al. AP's "Erie- Lackawanna gray" is the EMD gray chip (Lackawanna cab-unit yellow is still a mystery as it was lighter and yellower than imitation gold, though it was also used on Reading cab units). The gray is the same as Burlington switcher gray and the darker Bangor & Aroostook as-delivered cab-unit gray. Freight car builders were much the same way; ACF Berwick used Glidden No.204 Standard Brown on Lackawanna's steel cars, yet no two look exactly alike once they've been on the road for a while. About ten years ago I saw an old sign painter putting gold leaf on a firetruck, and started talking to him. He had said (his opinion) that gold leaf was only a good lettering when light reflecting from it made it glow. It was his opinion that the imitation gold paint is a buff color to sort of imitate that glowing gold leaf in reflected light. Interestingly, the imitation gold paint, when reflecting light, disappears into the background color. A consideration while looking at old photos is that quite often the imitation gold lettering is against dark red or dark green -- there's usually six or more f-stops difference in exposure between them (10% density lettering versus 90% density background).